What theme is common to the two excerpts below?
1.. . his theory of running until he reached camp and the boys had one flaw in it: he lacked the endurance. several times he stumbled, and finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. when he tried to rise, he failed. he must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely walk and keep on going. as he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling quite warm and comfortable. he was not shivering, and it even seemed that a warm glow had come to his chest and trunk. and yet, when he touched his nose or cheeks, there was no sensation. running would not thaw them out. nor would it thaw out his hands and feet. then the thought came to him that the frozen portions of his body must be extending. he tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the panicky feeling that it caused, and he was afraid of the panic. but the thought asserted itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his body totally frozen.
(jack london, to build a fire)

2.presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with the captain clinging with one hand to the keel. he would have appeared like a man raising himself to look over a board fence, if it were not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. the correspondent marvelled that the captain could still hold to it.

they passed on, nearer to shore—the oiler, the cook, the captain—and following them went the water-jar, bouncing gayly over the seas.
the correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy—a current. the shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff, topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture before him. it was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in a gallery looks at a scene from brittany or algiers.

he thought: "i am going to drown? can it be possible? can it be possible? can it be possible? " perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature."
(stephen crane, the open boat)

mysteries of life and death

finding hope after tragedy

humanity's against nature

finding inner strength

choosing between security and individualism

its hard for me to see which word is supposed to be in bold. if i knew then i would be able to better.

with mrs. linde, nora reveals her insensitivity and lack of shame about the forgery she committed. she implies that mrs. linde has obviously aged since they last met 10 years earlier, which accounts for nora’s inability to recognize her old friend. although nora seems sympathetic to mrs. linde’s plight, she can’t seem to control herself from boasting about her three children, her husband’s recent promotion, and how good she feels to finally have some money to spend. in a way, she seems to be flaunting her good fortune in front of mrs. linde who, deprived of all these benefits, has come to ask nora for . it is also through her interactions with mrs. linde that we realize something deeper lies under nora’s seemingly childish exterior. she reveals the secret of her forgery to mrs. linde and seems to see herself as quite resourceful for having done it.

in the company of dr. rank, nora is freer than she is with her own husband. she openly laughs with joy at knowing that all the other bank employees will be under her husband’s control. she offers dr. rank a macaroon, apparently forgetting that he knows she is forbidden to eat them. she then quickly covers for herself by claiming that mrs. linde brought them. nora seems much more assertive and free with these other characters, as well as unabashedly willing to scheme, lie, and justify her transgressions as altruistic.  

krogstad provides an interesting parallel to nora. like nora, he too is guilty of committing forgery, for which torvald condemns him and decides to fire him. although krogstad is a man and nora a woman, their crimes of forgery unite them. in fact, krogstad might represent what nora would be like if she were a man and were not strictly scrupulous like her husband is. for example, she tells mrs. linde that "a barrister's profession is such an uncertain thing, especially if he won't undertake unsavoury cases; and naturally torvald has never been willing to do that." perhaps nora would have delved into the unsavory, given how opposite she is to her husband. krogstad's is also the only harsh voice of reality that nora is forced to hear, and that is because he blackmails her for her regaining his job at the bank. finally, torvald’s reaction to krogstad’s forgery seems to foreshadow his harsh and cold reaction to nora’s forgery.